Morning Brief: MIT spinoff developing next-gen CSP, The fate of the storage ITC in a split congress
MIT-spinoff 247Solar’s hot-air-driven Brayton Cycle system “operates at atmospheric pressure and requires no steam, molten salts, or heat transfer oils” and stores heat in ceramic pellets instead of molten salts. Also — more confusion for FERC chair Neil Chatterjee
Jigar Shah: Policy action and tech deployments needed for power sector innovation
“We’ve averaged 2.4 cents a kilowatt hour for the last six months for PPAs. That’s actually too low. I think we would be fine at 3.4 cents… I don’t think that solar and wind industries would skip a beat [without their tax incentives], and they have other policy mechanisms.”
Morning Brief: Texas bill would tax wind and solar but not natural gas, Covid speeds up peak oil
Also in the brief: 100-MW Mustang Two Whirlaway Solar Farm comes online in California, Arizona utility APS offering $144M to tribes in coal-country, Q CELLS to build a 41-MW floating PV power plant.
Morning Brief: Biden’s energy transition team, BlackRock CEO backs mandatory climate reporting
Also in the brief: The Solar Foundation and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council are merging, Trump administration removes scientist in charge of assessing climate change, Cypress Creek closed a seven-year, $200 million debt financing, and solar-powered butter.
Saul Griffith wants to electrify everything and rewire America
That’s going to take a lot of jobs, which is great news at a time when we have more unemployment in America since the Depression.
Clean Energy Accelerator odds increase on Biden win, US net-zero grid goal
The Clean Energy Accelerator, as envisioned in legislation introduced earlier this year and late last year, pairs each public dollar with multiple private dollars to expand clean energy’s reach in the US.
Morning Brief: Six Midwest utilities to spend $15B to deploy 4 GW of solar, 3.6 GW of wind and 1 GW of battery storage
Also in the brief: A rural Virginia county grapples with the pros and cons of a proposed $200 million, 149 MW solar farm, Utah’s solar advocates plan to fight decision by state regulators.
Choosing the Energy Secretary in a Biden administration: Research or deployment?
Jigar Shah from years ago: “We need a ‘deployment’ Energy Secretary. One who understands how entrepreneurs move from research to revenue. One who understands the difference between venture capital and project finance.”
Morning Brief: Five consequences of a Biden administration for US energy, 150-MW solar project in Wisconsin is complete
Also in the brief: The first of presumably many items on solar-powered turkey farms.
